We have reported previously on the impact of numerical limitations in patent claims and on the law of equivalents following the Supreme's Court's Actavis decision. The recent judgment of HH Judge Hacon in Regen Lab v Estar Medical brings the two concepts together.

In this blog we look at the very recent decision of the Patents Court in favour of Chugai in the long-running patent and licensing dispute with the patentee, UCB. The judgment is interesting in looking at how an English judge applies US law of patent construction, and for helpful guidance on patent drafting.

In this blog we take a look at a recent decision of the UK High Court concerning standard essential-patents, part of the global patent battle between Apple and Qualcomm. The focus of this particular ruling was on jurisdictional issues and an application to strike-out the claim against the UK defendant.

Are the English Courts the right forum for claims of patent infringement when the relief sought is the determination of a global FRAND licence? This was the question that Mr Justice Carr recently had to consider in Conversant Wireless Licensing SARL v Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.

It is a statutory fundamental that following a finding that a patent (or other intellectual property) right is both valid and infringed, the successful patentee is entitled to financial compensation in the form of damages or an account of profits, but not both. In this blog we look at a recent High Court decision in which the patentee tried unsuccessfully to argue it should defer choosing between the two until the last possible moment.

Although the adverse consequences were perhaps less than they otherwise might have been, the recent decision in L'Oréal Société Anonyme & L'Oréal (UK) Limited v RN Ventures Limited underlines the benefits of registering transactions in a patent at the Intellectual Property Office.

Last month the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice published an article written by three members of our team analysing the key points of the landmark UK Supreme Court decision in Actavis v Eli Lilly.

A well-established principle of English patent law was that construction for the purposes of validity should mirror that in respect of infringement.
Risking seven years bad luck, Arnold J smashed that mirror when he held that it is no longer good law that a patent claim will lack novelty simply because a prior publication discloses subject matter which, if performed, will necessarily infringe the claim. In particular, subject-matter that would infringe a claim applying the doctrine of equivalents will not suffice to deprive that claim of novelty.
This decision – in Generics (UK) Ltd and others v Yeda Research and Development Company Limited and others [2017] EWHC 2629 (Pat) - marks the first patent court case to consider the impact on novelty of the UK doctrine of equivalents which was recently introduced into UK patent law by the Supreme Court in Actavis v Lilly [2017] UKSC 48.

Yesterday evening, Fieldfisher joined some 800 other members of the patent community to listen to a panel of European and US judges debate the recent UK Supreme Court decision in Actavis UK Ltd v. Eli Lilly & Co which introduced a doctrine of equivalents into UK law. The panel included two of the judges who decided the case in the Supreme Court, Lords Neuberger and Sumption, as well as Professor Dr. Peter Meier-Beck, Presiding Judge of the German Federal Court of Justice , Judge Rian Kalden, Head of the IP Division, Court of Appeal, The Hague and Judge Kate O’Malley, US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The panel was chaired by Professor Sir Robin Jacob who explained that Lord Hoffman was unable to join the panel.
Here is a note of the key issues.